domain:preview.redd.it
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
4d ago
This is the part of Uncomfortable HBD Facts that is very underdiscussed: Blacks More Likely to have paranoid schizophrenia.
African Americans were four times more likely than Euro-Americans to receive a Schizophrenia diagnosis … race was the strongest predictor of an admission diagnosis of Schizophrenia after controlling for the influence of other demographic variables. Interestingly, Barnes showed that Schizophrenia subtypes were not equally distributed by race, with African American consumers significantly more likely to receive a diagnosis of Schizophrenia-paranoid subtype or Schizophrenia-undifferentiated subtype than Euro-American consumers.
There's a ton of results in this vein, and his Arabic name makes me suspect that his parents were into Nation of Islam stuff, Yakub doctrine and all that, which is of course schizophrenic throughout (very funny though), so it might be hereditary for him, on top of direct schizophrenia-promoting nurture.
But I don't think the beancounting method really explains the problem. Many, many, many more Blacks who don't get any diagnosis and generally function well buy into this zany conspiracist bullshit. In the limit, the whole narrative of Black existence under the yoke of Systemic Racism and mass slaughter of unarmed black men by the police in the US is a giant conspiracy theory with clear paranoid motives, and spotlight cases like Nick Cannon going off about melanin, people buying into Jussie Smollett hoax, Candace Owens spiraling into even crazier hypotheses about secret societies behind Macron's wife being a man, "black scholars" with mind-bogglingly idiotic and racist doctrines propped up as real intellectuals (I like Kobi Kazembe Kambon a.k.a. Joseph A. Baldwin, read it up), etc. etc. all add up to a general schizophrenic-paranoid tone in the Black community. Except – wasn't it Whites (and Jews, but in any case, the well-off, educated non-Black demographics) who championed the doctrine of systemic racism? Aren't Whites also buying into many of these hoaxes and libels today?
These are accomplishments he is very proud of, that frequently come up during his expositions. He will start by telling me how the people at the Social Security office are stealing from him (AFAICT, that was either taxes or a garnishment of some sort), then veer into reciting all the vegetables he eats because he knows how to eat healthy, he cooks for himself, but these people they not eatin' right and it causes problems, mental problems in they head they be havin' mental problems because they don't eat right, not like him because he eats his green beans, real food that he cooks for himself because he knows how to eat right, act right because he learned it in school, third grade, food pyramid, he learned that here in Jersey in school, third grade, and these other people should have learned it but they not acting right, that’s just Jersey, lotta bad people in Jersey, obsessed with money, takin’ from you, takin’ your money.
Unless you exaggerate greatly, Hassan sounds like he has quite a low IQ on top of his "schizophrenia". Mentally, he's close to an 8-10 year old White or Asian kid.
And I think this is the elephant in the room. There is simply not enough capacity to suppress delusions induced and exacerbated by the information environment. There is no clear separation between delusions and sincere confusions, Hassan won't have a mature enough epistemology to distinguish things that he pathologically overfixates on from things that just kinda legit sound right, even if you pump him full of antipsychotics. This is the ground zero of Black American Madness, along with smarter people than Hassan who also have a more profound illness and/or higher ego strength so they keep it together and spread their nonsense around. Then there are borderline cases who are relatively gullible and either propagate the message or simply do not push back, like that smart and non-insane Black guy once did for another celebrated Guggenheim scholar, Ibram X. Kendi:
"They are aliens," I told Clarence, confidently resting on the doorframe, arms crossed. "I just saw this documentary that laid out the evidence. That's why they are so intent on White supremacy. That's why they seem to not have a conscience. They are aliens."
Clarence listened, face expressionless. "You can't be serious."
"I'm dead serious. This explains slavery and colonization. This explains why the Bush family is so evil. This explains why Whites don't give a damn. This explains why they hate us so damn much. They are aliens!" I'd lifted off the doorframe and was in full argumentative mode.
"You really are serious about this," Clarence said with a chuckle. "If you're serious, then that has got to be the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life! I mean, seriously, I can't believe you are that gullible." The chuckle turned to a grimace. "Why do you spend so much time trying to figure out White people?" he asked after a long pause.
Clarence had asked this question before. I always answered the same way. "Because figuring them out is the key! Black people need to figure out what we are dealing with!"
"If you say so. But answer me this: If Whites are aliens, why is it that Whites and Blacks can reproduce? Humans can't reproduce with animals on this planet, but Black people can reproduce with aliens from another planet? Come on, man, let's get real."
"I am being real," I replied. But I really had no comeback. I stood and turned around awkwardly, walked to my room, plopped down on my bed, and returned to staring at the ceiling. Maybe White people were not aliens. Maybe they became this way on earth. Maybe I needed to read more Frances Cress Welsing. I looked over at The Isis Papers on my nightstand.
Well, Clarence then probably got a normal job and never achieved prominence as a thought leader for his people. He wasn't exuberant enough to be made a champion.
…and then comes everyone else, who is simply overwhelmed by moral blackmail, the volume of second-hand "corroborating evidence" and plain emotional confidence. And here we are.
In short my thesis is that a small (large relatively, but still amounting to fractions of a percent of the total population) difference in the rates of paranoid schizophrenia, compounded by significantly lower IQ, creates a critical mass of self-propagating cultural madness in the Black community, which lowers general epistemic standard to rock bottom and then spills over to the broader society, warping the entire default narrative of what it is about. And now we're training large language models on this oeuvre, which seals the bubble of the consensus reality. I bet if I feed this exchange to any frontier LLM, it'll rebuke me harshly with the usual tut-tutting routine about how systemic racism is totally real and Scholars say so.
Regarding your actual question: I think paranoid schizophrenics, no matter how "functional" for the moment, certainly can't have guns. This isn't hard.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
Can I blame the lenders and the progressives?
In general this argument that political pressure has forced businessmen to be immoral is not very convincing for me. I hope to live in a society where generally businessmen have lines they won't cross, like openly defrauding the poor.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
They wouldn't accept cash? I mean, literally piles of Benjamins?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
LOL this is a non-answer, but at least it's funny. I'll give you that. ;P
roystgnr
4d ago
I don't think I understood any of this.
My apologies. I'll back up, if you're still curious.
Think of the function sin(x).
We can take a number, like x=π/3, and plug it into the function, and we get another number, in this case sin(π/3)=√3/2. (here π/3 is in radians, which when we start doing calculus turns out to be more natural than 60°) We can imagine doing that with every real number, and plotting every (x,y) on a plane, and we get a "sine wave" picture like this. That "plane" gets called ℝ×ℝ, or ℝ², because it's defined with 2 real number (ℝ) lines that form a cross intersecting at one point. It's a great picture! I can think about the function inputs as being the length of lines in one direction, outputs as the lengths of lines in another, derivatives as slopes of angled lines, etc.
But ... how about sin(i), where i=√-1? On the one hand, who cares, because it seems like √-1 shouldn't exist: there's no real number whose square is negative, and even when we found such numbers to be useful intermediate results in algebra problems we still decided to call them "imaginary" as opposed to the newly-named "real" numbers; you'd still expect to have a real number in the end. On the other hand, we soon found "complex numbers" (ℂ, all the numbers x+yi you can make by adding a real number x to an imaginary number yi) to also be useful in engineering problems (they represent oscillation a way similar to how positive numbers can represent growth and negative ones decay), and then we found them to be useful in physics problems (where a "quantum wave function" takes complex values), and at some point it's hard to ignore something as not "real" when it's at the foundation of our understanding of reality.
We can plot a collection of complex numbers on the "complex plane": for every complex number z=x+yi you just plot it as (x,y). One complex number can be described with two reals.
But how do we plot a function that takes complex number inputs and gives complex number outputs? We would need to plot it in ℂ×ℂ, two complex planes that form a cross intersecting at one point. "But two planes meet in a line, not a point", you might object, and that's true, in 3D. ℂ×ℂ only fits in 4D. If I wanted to clearly plot part of a real function y=f(x), I can plot each point as (x,y) in a square, but if I want to clearly plot part of a complex function f(x+yi)=u+vi, I need to be able to plot each point as (x,y,u,v) in a hypercube. I don't have any hypercubes lying around! I can't even visualize a hypercube.
So, we plot garbage like this instead. The xy plane there is the complex plane of inputs x+yi, and for each output u+vi=sin(x+yi), the height z of the red surface is u and the height z of the green surface is v. We plot (x,y,u) and (x,y,w) in the same cube and try to picture the true (x,y,u,w) from the result. Those two 2D surfaces twisting through 3D space are really two aspects of a single 2D surface twisting through 4D space. They're easier to understand if you use that web page to rotate them back and forth and turn them translucent, but still I can't picture the single surface in 4D that they represent. If I could actually visualize 4D then the plot of that single surface would fit in my head as naturally as that first "sine wave" plot did.
If you magically found yourself in a 4D space you might be best off acting a bit like a slime by closing your eyes and feeling your way around. Your eyes will lie, your touch won't.
I think here it depends on what you mean by "in a 4D space".
If my movements were naturally restricted to a 3D manifold (a "surface" is just a 2D manifold) curving through 4D space then you're probably exactly right. Let's back up to 2D. Imagine as an analog a 2D version of me, living on the surface of a globe. Open my eyes, and if light also follows the globe surface then in any unobstructed direction I look I see the back of my own head one globe-circumference away, but if I'm small enough compared to the globe then it feels almost like I'm in good old flat 2D space. Even if the globe is made of taffy and some 3D monster stretches spikes out of it, mushes parts of it together elsewhere to make a torus or worse, whatever. I can still move around any weird surface I'm stuck to so long as it's smooth enough, to any part of it I want to go to so long as it's it's connected. When I'm on the globe, or on any points of "positive curvature" on a more complicated surface, I might feel a little weird (there's more "room" inside a shape than you would expect from its boundary, so it might be like my skin is getting compressed or my innards stretched). Or, on points of "negative curvature" on a more complicated shape, I might feel like my skin was getting stretched or my innards compressed. But either way, if I was small enough compared to the curvature then I'd still be just a slightly squished-around version of me.
Your "bag of holding" example actually is a 3D manifold - locally I can move parts of my body in no more or fewer than the usual 3 dimensions: up/down, left/right, or forward/backward. But those things are only consistent locally - if I stick my arm 10 inches forward into the bag and then reach 10 inches up, it won't be in the same place as if I reach my other arm 10 inches up (outside the bag) and then 10 inches forward. This 3D manifold has geometry that can't exist in 3D space, but only embedded in a space with at least one more dimension.
But with the same one extra dimension, if my movements were unrestricted? Local senses like touch would get weird too. Imagine that 2D me, previously stuck to the globe like a flat sticker (though free to move parallel to the globe surface), suddenly peeled away into the air. I can still wiggle around in my accustomed two directions, but my orientation with respect to that third direction is at the whim of the breeze. On a globe I might be able to look or propel myself north/south vs east/west, but 2D me has no muscles that can turn his limbs up/down. Even if someone took pity and stuck me back on the globe so I could move around its surface again, if they stuck me on backwards then I'd be backwards for the rest of time; clockwise would seem to be counter-clockwise and vice-versa. 3D me in a true 4D space would be in the same boat; my arm has no way to reach hyperup/hyperdown.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
I'm perfectly fine with increasing cost and reducing utility in this situation. Yes credit cards are convenient, no I don't think the societal ills they unleash on the financial illiterate are worth the amount of convenience they provide. I like having them, and don't think we should get rid of the entire industry, but I'd be happy to make it significantly more inconvenient to use them if we could stop the predatory behavior.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
I am terrified of wasps and yellow jackets. But ticks are not to be underestimated - I say, out of maybe irrational fear, because I don't live and haven't lived in major tick-infested locations, but the idea that I could go hiking and end up with a life-changing inability to eat meat without even realizing is scary
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
Credit cards are truly evil. I mean, I use them. I've used them for 20+ years and never had a single finance charge or fee ever, while accruing thousands of dollars in cash back rewards. They paid for my Switch 2 in fact.
But they're still evil. The yawning gaping pit they represent, which I have to balance on the edge of every time I run up their balance each month (within my budget) and then pay off in full is nightmarish. Because there is nothing stopping me, besides 20 years of inflexible habit and discipline, from just YOLOing with the nearly $40k of available credit they make available to me.
I watch some of these Financial Audits, and people's minimums on all their cards is over the amount I manage to save each month. I'll watch someone my same age, my same income, and they are looking at 5-10 years of aggressively budgeting and paying off debt to get back to zero. Meanwhile my assets appreciated more than my annual salary the last few years. But in another timeline, with only slightly different choices early on, I could have been them.
Half these people, when asked about a specific credit account, just go "I don't know, they just gave me that card when I bought X". X could be a car, a new roof, a large plumbing job, etc, etc. Like in my driveway story below, fucking everything is trying to get you to sign up for a new credit card now. People unthinkingly just take them. "Yeah, more free money" they think.
As I've gotten older, my arrogance at being part of the Credit Card Master Race has waned. Fuck them.
Shrike
4d ago
I think I agree that a firearm has a lower entry point. However the drone might pose a greater threat at relatively similar skill levels, although it's possible that counter-drone tech advances and popularizes quickly enough to once again raise the skill level necessary to use a drone competently.
The truth is that a low-functioning psychotic with a gun (or a drone) does not pose a threat to society even if he poses a threat to individuals in society. It's intelligent and organized individuals that pose the threat to social stability, and guns and drones are a force-multiplier to that effort. Drones are to modern society what firearms were in an earlier: an extremely powerful tool – or weapon – that allows relatively under-equipped groups to reach parity with professional soldiers. The drone is to the tank what the musket was to the knight.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Honestly I don’t mind EA as much as some of the other mega studios. They put out some decently fun Star Wars games, BioWare was BioWare’s own fault apparently, Apex is okay, Split Fiction and It Takes Two are examples of creative games rare elsewhere, their bombed games rarely break my heart. I’d like them to be a little looser with owned but semi dormant IP, but that’s every big company.
quiet_NaN
4d ago
overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content
Out of genuine interest of someone who avoids most social media: how overtly antizionist and antisemitic content is trending on social media? And what kind? Classic Nazi stuff, caricatures of long-nosed Jews sitting on bags of money? Alleged IDF war crimes which may or may not be Hamas fabrications? "From the river to the sea", which denies Israel's right to exist? Narratives parallel to SecureSignals', e.g. that that most Jewish citizens are faithless towards their 'host' country and their true allegiance is to Israel?
FWIW, near-east related content I see on imgur is mostly critical of Israel, but mostly not what I would call "overtly antizionist". Mostly it emphasizes the horrors of Gaza, sometimes perhaps spreading wartime propaganda (e.g. "IDF snipers are deliberately headshotting kids in Gaza", which seems unlikely on priors). I do not recall reading memes which would advocate for Israel to be wiped of the map, or content which mentions Jews directly. But then again, imgur is a filter bubble full of elderly lefties.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
I mean, they already did this in the 2010s with Battlefiled One, did they not? I don’t think it will happen again for a bit. Their next game is maybe 50% likely to be another Bad Company or Vietnam era one, 30% it’s a Cold War one, 20% something else (maybe 10% space age and 10% a 90s/2000s confused middle)
Is there any way to have known, back in medieval times, that there were two massive continents across the Atlantic ocean?
I imagine since there were Vikings - and probably others - that reached them by then, there could be sources that at least describe the presence of land there. Though probably not about what kind of land and whether that is the same land mass as Asia probably nobody knew definitely by that time. In fact, one could imagine a world where Bering land bridge stayed above water - would it then indeed be Asia?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
4d ago
To build on @Muninn's great explanation: Schizophrenia is in a way pattern matching in overdrive. What anti-psychotics do is dial the frequency in closer to the station that we call reality, but there is always still some fuzz. So a lot of people go on anti-psychotics for a while and because the fuzz is still there they don't really feel very different - or worse, they feel like they have traded the frankly fucking magical world they lived in for the grey lifeless slog all the zombies live in, because it has no effect on the symptoms like anhedonia.
And on top of that they also get to enjoy fun side effects like feeling dog tired all the time, constant headaches, weight gain despite constant vomiting, and the always delightful sensation of your muscles seizing of their own accord so you look like you have cerebral palsy because your jaw desperately wants to rest on your shoulder and your hands are doing their level best to retract into your elbows. On top of that, there is the widespread belief in the community that if you find yourself gurning you have been on anti-psychotics for too long and you are rolling the dice on involuntarily gurning for life.
faceh
4d ago
Sudan
Guess that one counts, definitely slipped my mind.
Kurdistan feels like cheating a bit, but good point.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
That you need a credit score to function in society as a whole should be illegal.
Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm very well aware of how and why credit score functions. I get it.
I was still very well put out when I had to go purchase a new car unexpectedly, only to have the guy who went to check my finances come out and stare at me like I was some lost crytpid and blurt out 'You have no credit score.'
Yes, because I grew up around adults who abused credit cards and paid the consequences and who had no desire to go down that road, thank you very much. Only to find out late that, gee whillickers, if you want to function as an adult in society for some things, you actually need a credit score, and for that, you need a credit card.
Why, yes, I'm still salty about that. How could you tell?
(And before you ask, all my previous vehicles were old, used, family hand-me-downs.)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
It’s a play for hearts and minds of current young Americans, and it’s probably working. Youth today probably don’t think of Saudi Arabia in the same breath as Iran, and that’s what they want.
Ioper
4d ago
Or why not just straight up report whatever some state propaganda organ says?
Why would the Russian/Ukrainian/Isreali MoD ever lie? Or why would Hamas or any of constituting parts for that matter? Surely we can uncritically re report their press releases, often with barely acknowledging where said statements come from and that won't lead these organisations to try to use us to launder propaganda?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Look, I don’t know about inner circles or whatever, but on a practical basis if China had control over TikTok then if war ever actually was threatened (eg Taiwan, and I’m a doomer there) TikTok would become overnight one of the single most powerful and effective propaganda weapons ever known. Yes, it’s a national security threat. At the very least if the algorithm is in Oracle’s hands, it’s a lot easier for the US to take further steps if, for example, Israel actually became an opponent or whatever.
jake
4d ago
You believe the "godhead" is "one" in the "'scriptural' 'sense'" via the eisegetical interpretation your predecessors tore apart the scripture in service of making, not what Christians have held for most of 2,000 years.
The meaningful historic definition of Christian can be shorthanded as one who holds and espouses the beliefs found in the Nicene Creed. The LDS rejects this explicitly. You claim to be Christian because you believe in a figure you call Christ (cc. "LDE"), not because you believe in the same Christ as those of the Nicene Creed. This is a matter of historic distinction of groups. The grand intersection of Christianity with the macro of world history is those of the Nicene Creed. You are not in one measure the same as us but through equivocation. You may continue to equivocate, we are not the same. For the most visibly signaling theological distinction, the Catholic Church, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches have interdenominational recognition of the validity of baptisms; all deny the validity of Mormon baptism. Mormons recognize no baptisms but their own. I repeat, and your leaders affirm for "The Great Apostasy," we are not the same.
I am also disinterested in matters of indeed settled theology. The Church is a monarchy, and while there is the priesthood of the laity, they are not charged with authority on matters of doctrine. The reason for this may be seen in many places but no better in its crudeness than the strained-to-shattered readings Mormon elders use to justify their doctrine. Stepping on John 1, which makes explicit the consubstantial nature of the Logos and God, to convolute John 17 as "This means there's 3 gods actually." Or far worse in the first LDS link, 1 Cor. 15:35-41 as Paul's secret code about resurrected states of being. This isn't even strained as I can say of John 17 and it's not the childish misunderstanding of the third heaven mention of 2. Cor. 12; it is not possible to have arrived at this interpretation without willful malfeasance. He's talking about astronomical objects, also called heavenly bodies.
I suppose you would fully condemn the many wives God gave to David, too?
The Septuagint condemns him. Solomon was tested with the lechery of his father, he failed, his chalice was filled with iniquity as the sin was visited upon him fully, the kingdom fell. There's a lesson in this.
"LDS leaders pretended that God coincidentally told them to stop practicing polygamy just in time to avoid direct conflict with the army"
The Edmund-Tucker Act preceded the "revelation" and this is what Woodruff is quoted as verbatim:
I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me.
The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question
The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice
I saw exactly what would come to pass if there was not something done. I have had this spirit upon me for a long time. But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write.
Now I will tell you what was manifested to me and what the Son of God performed in this thing.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Genuinely kind of surprised that our site doesn’t support native latex.
the truth claims of the LDS and Nicene Christianity are cosmic, we can't use the same kind of empiricism on them, and so people who believe these things are important rely on their own epistemological standards for what's cosmically true: sacred texts, ancient creeds, community consensus, personal testimony -- all of which are vitally important both for Nicene Christians and the LDS.
That’s very key: There’s no way to empirically prove the theological assertions of either group. And, indeed, when the empirical evidence made it clear certain creeds of classic Christianity are false (e.g. the Earth is around 4 billion years old, not 6,000 years old, and the Earth rotates around the sun, not the sun around the Earth) the initial reaction was to threaten anyone who made those scientific claims with torture.
If we don’t consider the Bible reliable, the claims that Jesus even existed are very flimsy, resting on a passage in Antiquities of the Jews that may not even be authentic, and may not be true even if authentic; I myself find the claim that Decius Mundus (to use another story in the Antiquities) was so lovesick for one Paulina that he would pay what would amount to over a million dollars in today’s money to be with her questionable, especially with how he supposedly got into bed with her.
If someone comes up to me and says “You’re going to Hell because you don’t have my particular form of Christianity”, my reaction is “yeah, that’s a pretty strong claim, what’s your evidence?”, at which point they open up their Bible so I retort with “that’s nice, but what’s your empirical evidence.” For centuries we were in the dark ages, with people slaughtering each other over what interpretation of the Bible is correct. Those religious wars only quieted down and life only improved for mankind when we started looking at actual real world empirical evidence and engaged in the scientific process.
I’m a big fan of Christianity. I’m opposed to any type of fundamentalism, whether it’s fundamentalist Christianity or narrow-minded illiberal “left-wing” thinking — for example, the notion supported by empirical evidence that someone with a high sex partner count is more likely to divorce someone than a virgin will is considered heresy by the illiberal left, and they will use shame and other non-empirical tactics to refute the notion because it goes against their creeds.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I don’t understand any of this.
Stuff with boundary conditions is modeled by differential equations. Differential equations have wave-based solutions. Waves must be represented with 2 numbers, and one way to do this is to separate the “real” and “imaginary” components. If we treat these like (x,y) pairs, we can graph them on a plane just like any other pair of numbers. The set of all these complex numbers is denoted ℂ.
Royst is talking about a different (but similar?) class of equations which have solutions that require 4 numbers. To graph them, we’d need two simultaneous planes: ℂ×ℂ. So we’re out of luck unless we want to get cute with color.
Yes, of course you are. Because you value the wretched above all others, because that is the general rule everyone is taught. This is itself a problem with modernity, if modernity goes back to AD 1 anyway.
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